There are times when we need to stand up and be counted as a team. And no, not for a campaign or the usual office activity, but when the human cry calls for it. It was a surreal experience this week, when every single member of the organization stood together, hand in hand ready to do our bit in supporting all those who are suffering the nature’s wrath in Kashmir. Everyone at #ARM Worldwide donated their salary of one working day towards the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund to do their bit in helping the affected state. Make sure you read our contribution as well as how the world of Digital Media did its bit in our feature post right here.

We hope and pray for life to return to normal as soon as possible in Jammu and Kashmir.

And one way to go back to normal is to run through all the major stories that broke through in the world of digital, the way we do, every weekend. As usual, we plan to keep the stories short and informative, and will add the link where in case, there is more, you can read along.

Report suggests that small businesses spend more on Social Media than any other media

It is no surprise, given the relatively low cost and high visibility of social media platforms in conjunction with high population, that Social Media today is the most popular form of outreach media. According to the report, at least 74.5% of the small businesses, defined by those with less than a hundred employees, use Social Media as the most important tool to advertise and promote their work. This is a 71.4% rise from last year. Of the entire budget, allocation for Social Media is around 21.4%, which is really substantial. Print and outdoor media saw a steep decline, with the two combined totalling for just less than 60% after accounting for 63% last year.

After all, TwitPic Lives on

We’re happy to announce we’ve been acquired and Twitpic will live on! We will post more details as we can disclose them

It was a rather sad state of affairs last week, when Twitpic, the popular image sharing service via Twitter announced that it was closing down after receiving legal notices from Twitter for trademark reasons. With little financial muscle power, Twitpic had decided to give in and close the shutters, however, in a dramatic turn of events, the service has now been acquired and will live on. Details of the takeover and the rest is not clear, but one thing for sure, you can continue using TwitPic, without worrying, at least for now.

A Report suggests that your choice of colors matters a lot in mobile campaigns

A study by mobile ad network, Todacell, has concluded that the colors used in mobile ads are a key to determining how well will your mobile ad campaign will perform. According to the study, in countries with relatively low GDP, ads with brighter color palettes tend to perform better, while countries with higher GDP, tend to favor muted colors. The same study concluded that CTR almost increased up to 150% when the right color based on the location was chosen.

iOS 8 adoption rate lower than that of iOS 7

Apple released iOS 8 on September 17th, 2014 for the general public. While the update is nowhere near as drastic or a massive leap like iOS 7 from iOS 6, it has its share of interesting features. That combined with the fact that you needed about 5 GB of free space on your mobile device meant that the update was met with lukewarm response. For most of the users with 16 GB or even 8 GB devices, it was absolutely impossible to update and as a result Apple came under a lot of criticism and the adoption rates were pretty flat. According to Tapjoy, iOS 8 adoption rate was around 6% mark after 18 hours of release, while it was almost double at 16% for iOS 7. US remains the most popular country with almost 1 in every 10 user upgrading to iOS 8 coming from there.

Resource Share of the Week

In our resource share of the week, we will be talking about how to increase the engagement on your or your brand profile on LinkedIn. Unlike, Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn is an unforgiving platform. You are dealing with people fairly high in the corporate ladder, so both, your content strategy and posting strategies have to be well defined. You cannot spam or bombard your content and as a result, being effective without being overly ambitious is what the fundamental is. Here is an infographic, that would help you do just that:

With that, we come to the end of the roundup this week. We will be back on the coming Friday with more interesting stories from the world of Digital Marketing. However, before we go, we would like to appeal to each one of you reading, to please spare some time and donate if you can to the PM Relief Fund in bringing aid to the flood affected regions of J&K. And if, a donation is a big ask, so include everyone affected in your prayer, we are sure, it would make a difference.